On October 18th, Penn State Marketing Association had the pleasure of welcoming Bobby McConnell to speak at a general body meeting. During his own years at Penn State, he s was a member of the Sports Marketing Division of PSMA. Bobby graduated in 2011 from Smeal College of Business with a degree in Marketing.

Bobby’s Penn State education landed him a job with ESPN as an Account Services Representative in the fall of 2011. During his two years with ESPN, he managed advertising campaigns and maintained client business by working with major agencies to support ESPN Nation and ESPN Syndicated Television and Events.

Bobby then moved on to work as an Account Executive at Me-TV Network. He was only the second employee of Me-TV’s national sales team. At Me-TV, he had several responsibilities, such as developing sales strategies and sales pitches, forming partnerships with advertisers, and putting together multimedia packages to partner with agencies.

After two years at Me-TV, Bobby got hired as an Account Executive at Amazon. He explained that when he first began at Amazon, it was like a new world to him since he had spent the past 4 years working with TV advertising. Bobby now works in the world of digital marketing and analytics. He leverages Amazon’s world-class digital analytic technologies for the customization of advertising campaigns. He is reasonable for creating new business and enhancing existing partnerships. He showed us Amazon advertising examples, such as Gillette razors for men, and explained to us how he analyzes data for Gillette to determine what advertising path to take and who to target on Amazon’s website.

During Q&A, a member asked Bobby what he thought the future looks like for digital marketing and TV advertising. In his answer Bobby announced that, “The amount of money spent on digital marketing has eclipsed TV advertising for the first time ever.” He believes that digital marketing will continue to grow, while TV advertising will continue to diminish as time goes on and the digital world becomes an even bigger part of everyone’s lives.